Power management is a challenging problem for complex data storage systems using dynamic massive arrays of drives, client/compute nodes, server storage systems, cloud computing, drive enclosures housing drive arrays, switches, etc., as well as data transaction processing.
Data storage arrays, that use some form of RAID, provide the necessary capacity, bandwidth, and full-resilience that is expected of servers in the environment of generating large volumes of data and storing data reliably, cost-effectively, and which must also be accessed efficiently. The data stored in the data storage systems are retained for extended periods of time, thereby leading to significant investment in storage.
Advancements in the field of complex data storage systems has brought the problem of high power consumption to the forefront. Data centers consume megawatts of power which consequently leads to excessive electricity bills. Another problem of such high power consumption is heat generated during the operation of complex data storage systems which leads to increased drive failure rates. In order to prevent severe crashes due to excessive heating, a sufficient cooling regimen has to be provided within the data storage system which may result in excessive operation costs.
By limiting the power consumption of storage devices for I/O (Input/Output) activity, the operational cost of the system may be significantly reduced, the life span of the data storage devices may be extended, and eco-friendly high performance computations may be attained in addition to reduction in the operational costs.
Usually, in order to constrain the power use in a computational facility, a system administrator would assign a maximum power budget to each piece of equipment. If every piece of equipment operates below the power budget, then the entire facility will operate below the power budget. However, this is not an efficient arrangement for complex data storage systems because some equipment (or nodes) may need more power than others at a given time due to their I/O load, and no data storage system is available where nodes that are not using all of their power could share the unused power with nodes that require more power for their operations.
A previous data storage system has been developed by the current Applicants having an efficient power management mechanism for a data storage system implemented in a drive enclosure through real-time monitoring and control of power consumption of the storage devices exclusively within the drive enclosure.
This previous system assumes the control of the power budget in the drive enclosure in a localized manner by housing a power control system within the drive enclosure that is configured to supervise, in real time, the loading power levels of the drives by directly monitoring the power usage of each drive, the input and output levels of the power supplies, and the temperature of the various enclosure components. Based on the acquired information, the system dynamically adjusts the power modes of drives.
However, being focused on controlling the power budget in a separate drive enclosure, this previous data storage system is not intended for, and therefore is not provided with the ability of active power monitoring and control of a cluster of equipment and maintaining a cumulative power budget across a number of heterogeneous devices in the data storage system through dynamical sharing of the power among the devices in the most efficient manner, and at the same time preventing exceeding of the power budget predetermined for the cluster of equipment, or even the entire data storage system.